Innovative Projects Realized

Implementing Solar PV Charging Stations for Electric Vehicles

In this project we will monitor the technical performance of a solar photovoltaic (PV) charging station for electric vehicles that is currently under implementation at York University. The goal of the project is to use that performance data to analyze the replication potential of this renewable energy solution in additional locations in Canada and in other countries.

Data Analytics and Visualization for Social Media

The exponential increase in social media textual data creates enormous challenges to read and interpret text.
Twitter has grown from delivering 65 million tweets per day to over 200 million in 1 year. Facebook has 800
million users (each with ~130 friends). Over half the users visit Facebook daily. Of active Internet users, 77%
read blogs. These rapidly growing forms of communication have society struggling to understand and exploit.
Online social media (Twitter, Facebook …) allow readers to express thought/opinions on content. Media
publications have added opinion blog commentary to provide readers’ opportunity to share comments.
Editorial/business leaders see value in audience communication and appreciate that learning aspects such as
emotional tone influence their offerings, contributors and readers. Discovering emotion in text can positively
impact sales, investment, and provide a deeper knowledge of the influence different authors have on the public.
We will develop methods and tools that discern meaning from social media text. We will identify the
emotional content within text and develop tools to better understand emotions found in a social media text, and
develop new tools for media users to shape emotional content and respond to others.
Application of such methods and tools are limitless. Business relies on direct consumer dialogue through
social media to engender loyalty and predict and understand consumer behaviors. In the media, editorial
leadership is eager to better manage reader commentary and to learn underlying patterns that suggest specific
emotional tone. In healthcare, free-form texts are the most valuable data (doctor’s notes, patient histories,
healthcare messages posted by patients on social media). Such text contain information for physicians to use in
practice and for public agencies to make healthcare decisions. Methods and tools that discern meaning by
extracting information piecewise and visualize complex data represent an important advance in our
understanding of social media intercourse. A data-driven design approach to visualize content will aggregate
meanings more apparently and improve our ability to understand this emerging communication channel.

Field Robotics

The work here will investigate the use of quad rotors for pipeline inspection. Using simple quad rotors, the students will build software to have robots fly along pipeline infrastructure to build a visual model of the pipeline. The work will involve writing software (using ROS – Robot Operating System and Python).

University International Collaborations as a Vehicle for Social Change and Public Diplomacy

This project aims to address two emerging challenges or opportunities facing universities in the new context of global geo-politics. First, universities have often been regarded as key agents in processes of social change and development. The explicit role they have been allocated is the production of human capital and knowledge output to meet perceived social and economic needs. However, to this role may be added–especially during periods of reform and transformation–roles in building new institutions of civil society, in encouraging and facilitating new cultural values, and in training and socializing members of new social elites. So far, research on universities’ role in processes of social transformation and modernization has tended to be circumscribed within a specific national context: focusing on what they ought to do and what is planned for them to do in the landscape of national policy strategies. However, beyond national context, universities have been important in providing a route for the entry of external ideas and experiences into otherwise closed societies, and a repository for national sentiments that could come out of “storage” when time and circumstance permit. There might always be tensions between these “national” and “international” elements that could result in contradictions of identity and purpose within individual universities as well as in the broader society. Research on knowledge networks shows that universities, with their very diverse memberships, are most effective in generating innovation and learning, and facilitating productive “encounters” between global and local knowledge. Essentially, universities possess the comparative advantages that other development actors do not necessarily have, exhibited with (but not limited to) such features as people-to-people exchanges, cross-border knowledge mobility and joint research, which are in turn instrumental in easing the possible tensions between the “national” and the “international” elements. Arguably, the Canada China University Linkage Project (CCULP, 1988-1995) and its Phase II–Special University Linkage Consolidation Project (SULCP, 1996-2001), which fell on a period of pivotal changes in Chinese society, should have an impact on the transition of China’s society and economy, given the fact that they both aimed at maximizing human contacts and multiplying contacts at the thinking level. Based on such understanding, this project attempts to gather some empirical evidence in regard to the partnerships and collaborations between universities in Canada and China, and to examine them through the discourse concerning the social roles of universities derived from their international functioning. Ultimately, we wish to identify new synergies between universities in Canada and China that may now be emerging, and solicit ideas for future directions of university to university collaboration that could be beneficial to social development on both sides, as well as contemporary Canada-China relations.

Organocatalysed pericyclic reactions: Combining old and new chemistry producing a powerful tool (New)

The goal of this research project is to develop new methodologies that will enable the synthesis of functionalised and optically active building-blocks through unprecedented organocatalysed pericyclic processes. The main transformations to be studied are: sigmatropic rearrangements, electrocyclic rearrangements, cheleotropic additions, and ene reactions. In all cases, the proposed methodology will enable the formation of multiple controlled stereocenters from simple and easily accessible starting materials.

The first example of this methodology will be performed using [3,3]-sigmatropic rearrangements. Starting with a substituted .,d-enone, a [3,3]-sigmatropic rearrangement initiated by a chiral amine catalyst (such as a proline type catalyst) would generate a new ketone, possessing two new chiral centers, through an enamine intermediate. With an oxygen atom correctly positioned, a new carbonyl could be formed. An intramolecular addition of a chiral enamine onto this newly formed carbonyl would generate a cyclised a,ß-unsaturated ketone through an intramolecular aldol condensation. In the latter case, the cyclic, substituted and optically active enone would be formed from an acyclic precursor generating up to three new stereocenters.

Extending this idea further would enable the formation of substituted and optically active cyclopentenones. To do so, the use of a keto-ether is envisioned. Chiral amine could catalyse a [3,3]-sigmatropic rearrangement of the keto-ether. This would generate the carbonyl intermediate. Condensation of the chiral enamine on the newly formed carbonyl, followed by loss of a water molecule, would then generate the desired 5-membered ring.

I also would like to investigate the organocatalysed electrocyclisation of substituted dienones. An enamine generated from a chiral amine catalyst and a dienone could rearrange to a 6-membered ring from which a ketone could be formed by a-alkylation of the intermediate enamine. This methodology would enable the formation of optically active 6-membered rings, with up to three new stereocenters, from acyclic and achiral precursors in a single step.

Overall, this methodology has great potential for the synthesis of optically active 5 and 6-membered rings. The proposed organocatalytic methodology will give access to highly useful building blocks in one step from simple and achiral starting materials. Moreover, the formation of up to three contiguous and controlled stereocenters will be possible.

Fuel efficient air-traffic management (New)

Airline industry has been growing continuously during recent years while airport capacities have been stagnating. Despite the negative impact of September 11 attacks and ongoing global financial turmoil, demand for airline services has been steadily increasing. In most of the major markets including Europe, North America and large part of Asia, since early 90s, both total seat capacity and number of airline companies have increased significantly resulting fierce competition in industry. Emerging market conditions brought many challenges along with its benefits. Overcrowding in airport terminals, airspaces around the airports particularly in North America, airspaces between airports in Europe and frequent delays are some of the challenges for the airline industry as well as for the transportation authorities to tackle. Furthermore, volatility in fuel prices, increasing labor costs and unpredictable weather conditions in most parts of the World are force many airline companies to face extreme financial challenges.
It is clear that, increasing air traffic is becoming unmanageable for Air Traffic Control (ATC) personnel to effectively determine a flight plan for each aircraft. Due to high air traffic volume, ATC personnel frequently ignore economic and service objectives of airlines; rather they mainly focus on safety. Hence, fuel consumption cost, delays and early arrivals are frequently ignored. These traffic delays due to congestion in the National Airspace System (NAS) are a source of unnecessary cost to airlines, passengers, and air transportation dependent businesses. Delays also have significant environmental effects. Because of congestion, aircrafts are often forced to fly far from the cruise altitude and/or the cruise speed for which they are planned to. Such sub-optimality results in unnecessary fuel burn and gaseous emission that give rise to environmental concerns both globally and locally at ground level. The significant magnitude of air traffic delays presently observed is an indication that the current air traffic control infrastructure is not capable of handling present traffic levels.
Given the forecasted growth in aviation over the next decade there is an urgent need for air traffic control decision-support systems to focus on the problem of congestion in the NAS. This project deals with the development of decision support tools employing advanced optimization approaches for conflict-free air traffic flow management which take account all meaningful airport and flight characteristics into consideration that are not yet extensively studied in current academic literature. Flights schedules, speed changes, speed-dependent fuel consumption rate, separation distances and conflict avoidance are some of the issues that are precisely incorporated in our models. We also aim to determine the environmental benefits in terms of the change in the amount of emissions that are produced by aircrafts and develop decision support tools for the use of ATCs.
Keeping in mind that aircrafts are one of the significant contributors of air pollution and both economic and social reasons, airline companies are highly sensitive to their aircrafts’ fuel consumption rates; the proposed research has great potentials to assist airline companies to reduce their fuel consumption costs and consequently reduce aircrafts’ contribution to air pollution, particularly around airports.

Acute and Chronic Effects of Obesity

Society has a preoccupation with fat. This preoccupation is far-reaching and extends from our concern with body fat to food and agriculture. For example in agriculture, there is a focus is on the amount and type of fat in
dairy products and livestock. As a population or individual, we do not want to be too fat or too skinny. We are also fixated on how much fat we have and where we store it, whether it is around our stomachs or around our hips and thighs. We know that not all fat is equal and that it behaves differently based on where it is stored. Though we are preoccupied with fat as a society, we don’t know much about the fat cell itself and the
environment in which the fat cell lives. The proposed program of research seeks to understand how fat cells are programmed to store the amount of fat that they do and how fat cell programming affects its surrounding tissue
environment and biological systems. To answer our questions we first want to determine if early-life programming of the fat cell effects 1) its behaviour later in life, 2) its surround environment, and 3) how our
bodies use sugar, fat and energy. We also want to know if the effects of early-life programming of fat cells are different in men and women. If we can understand why a fat cell behaves the way it does we can use that
information to target changes in fat cell behaviour. The findings from the research project will contribute towards changing how we think about the fat cell and its impact on biological systems. This information would potentially benefit our society through impacting health, agriculture, and food science industries.

Intelligent Matching Algorithm Design and Implementation for Internet Big Data

In today’s Big Data era, scientists and businesses owners strive to find accurate real time insights from a large size of various types of data moving at high speed, which has an effect on the human lifestyle and the enterprises productiveness. Advances in Internet and web technologies allow organizations to gather petabytes of structured or unstructured data from various types of sources on a daily bases, which enables them to derive tremendous insights about their customers, products and services. However, managing and processing the big data in a timely manner demands IT solutions with more agility, adaptability and high performance. Specifically, algorithms should be designed to match customers with the right information, at the right time, and with the right format representation given the customers’ preferences.
In this project we investigate three aspects of algorithm design and implementation in the context of matching desired information to customers in the Internet big data environment.
1) Design of customer preference model: To match the information which is relevant to the customers, it is imperative to model the customer’s preferences correctly. The model should accurately reflect the customer’s preferences on the data content, timing and format of presentation. In the meantime, the model should automatically adjust to customers’ changes of preferences. It should also allow customers to configure their model preferences.
2) Design of the information database and database updating mechanism: Information needed by the customers can be stored in the service provider’s database and/or retrieved from other databases and/or webpages on the Internet. To provide customers with relevant information in a timely manner, the database structure has to be agile enough to accommodate unstructured data and to provide the infrastructure for highly efficient data traverse on a large scale. We will design algorithms to efficiently compute the relevance ratio between data points and customers. In addition, the computation results should be updated on a regular basis to reflect the dynamic changes of customer preferences and the data itself.
3) Design of the matching algorithms: We will design algorithms to operate on the NoSQL databases to match information to customers. Due to the large scale of the data and the customer base, algorithmic complexities have to be dealt with in order to ensure the quality and responsiveness of the matching service. We will develop algorithms that operate on the graph representation of the data points. Efforts will be particularly channeled to the design techniques that greatly improve the accuracy and efficiency of the algorithm by exploiting the specific characteristics of the graph structure. Previously accumulated knowledge on graph theory, algorithm design, scheduling and optimization will by leveraged to develop such algorithms.

Improve safety and productivity of construction projects using serious-game simulation

The project aims to improve construction productivity and safety by using game technology to simulate the construction processes involving earth-moving and lifting equipment (e.g. excavators and cranes). Data from the site are integrated in the simulation in real time.

Computational study into the stabilizing interactions in internal loops of oligonucleotides

Our focus in this computational proposal is on weak bonding interactions (WBIs) in the organization of molecular assemblies, here in particular oligonucleotides. With regards to WBIs, the hydrogen bond is certainly the most recognized, but C-H…O, C-H…pi, pi…pi and others must not be ignored if organization and stability are to be understood. WBIs are thus of fundamental importance in diverse phenomena, such as the effect of ligand-binding in ribonucleic acids on gene expression (riboswitches, mostly through pi…pi interactions). Our approach is to compute -mostly using density-functional theory methods- and analyze electron densities to identify and predict WBIs in oligonucleotides. RNA structure prediction from scratch is still an elusive goal, largely due to ill-defined loop regions. From available structures (crystal and NMR), we will rigorously characterize the network of WBIs in selected ill-defined RNA secondary and tertiary structures to develop a database of recurring WBIs for later use in RNA structure prediction.

In earlier studies on nucleic acids we have shown (Journal of Physical Chemistry A 115, 12800-12808 (2011)) that a fully optimized, planar base pair is a poor model of the base-pairing situation as found in X-ray and NMR structures of oligonucleotides, where the relative orientation of a base to its surrounding bases is dictated by the stability of the whole structure. Base pair geometries are distorted from their optimum planarity, and this leads to changes in the hydrogen bonding network. Changes in the relative orientation of a base pair with respect to another leads to changes in pi-stacking.

The kind of detailed insight that can be gained from studies on WBIs in oligonucleotides is illustrated in the fact that we were able to solve a long-standing controversy, namely whether AT or AU base pairs are more stable. Experimental evidence supports both views, and our work suggests that this seeming discrepancy is grounded in the particular choice of nucleic acids in the different studies. We found the hydrogen-bond densities, and therefore strengths, to vary widely, and any experimental conclusion therefore must strongly depend on the choice of system. Only a study on a large number of systems as ours reveals that, on average, there is no difference.

We now wish to use our proven methodology to determine WBIs in structurally ill-defined internal loops, with the ultimate goal to aid in the development of improved structure-determination algorithms. Candidates for our study will be selected oligonucleotides that form a hairpin loop or a duplex with internal bulges.

Chemogenomics of antifungal drugs

Candida albicans is an important pathogen that is a significant cause of serious hospital acquired infections. Our lab has a collection of approximately 1000 C. albicans strains that have been genetically engineered to each lack a single gene. The project will be to test the effect of drugs that are used to treat fungal infections on each of the mutant strains – to determine if the mutation causes the pathogen to become more sensitive or more resistant to the drug. Mutations that cause the C. albicans cells to become hypersensitive to the drug can define possible targets for new drugs that would improve the effectiveness of current drugs. Mutations that cause the cells to become resistant to the drug can identify future sources of drug resistant strains that can become serious health problems by making our current antifungal drugs ineffective. The student will use liquid handling robots to combine these approximately 1000 strains with specific drugs or chemicals, and monitor, through the use of robotic growth culturing techniques, the impact of these drugs or chemicals on the growth of the mutant strains. This will allow the student to identify those genes that cause either hyper-sensitivity or resistance to the drug or chemical being studied. The relationships among the genes that increase or decrease sensitivity to the drugs will be investigated through the use of computer databases. Overall, this project will provide the student with experience in specific aspects of pharmaceutical drug discovery, and in the technical manipulation of large collections of microbial strains though the aid of robotics.

Robust Design of Preventive Healthcare Facility Networks

Preventive healthcare services aim at reducing the likelihood and severity of life-threatening illnesses through early detection and prevention. In order for such services to be effective, the preventive healthcare facilities should be easily accessible. Factors that impact the accessibility include the number, type, and location of the facilities as well as the assignment of the clients to these facilities. In this project, we will develop a mathematical model that simultaneously determines the location of facilities along with their capacity levels and their assigned population zones so as to minimize the sum of the expected travel and waiting time (i.e. maximize the system’s accessibility). Moreover, the proposed model aims to hedge against demand and travel time uncertainty through a robust optimization approach. The proposed methodology will help designing healthcare facilities across Canada by developing optimal policy decisions about their location and capacities.